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I understand that moz has categorized seo issues as high, medium, low, etc...

Is there public data available that backs up these assertions?

One question that I have is regarding the effect of keyword changes. If you have a page that has the right keyword and places somewhere in search for that keyword, but gets an F for placement of the keyword and other particulars. What is the average difference expected from resolving those issues?

It is great to have information about ranking factors that you can try and move the needle on, and a basic checklist of housecleaning items to keep a clean site, but I worry that there is little actual organic value to any of those things. That external links are so strong of a ranking factor that none of the things that moz helps you do can move the needle.

I also worry that since moz doesn't appear to have any way to track impressions that you have to spend too much time externally tracking where the opportunities are. Or at least it would be way better to have that information internal to the tool.

I understand that with higher traffic sites you have more reason and data to use to find opportunities, but with smaller more local sites it is slim pickin's from the long tail. So finding ways to optimize effectively seems prohibitively difficult.

Or at least that is the way it appears going into it without quality data on how the various sections are actually effective the ranking of moz clients. I would hazard to guess that there is a ton of optimization effort going into the wrong places because the tool doesn't give great advice on how you should actually vet the results.

If you look at the local and global results on an individual keyword. You can see that moz is pulling that information. But it doesn't have it on the keyword list for tracked keywords. Why not? That would be way more useful. So you can quickly export and do a bit of math to determine what kind of actual results you are chasing.

That was a bit rambling, but mostly I'm wondering if there is any data on what is high value in moz and what is just wheel spinning. We can all make up our own opinion, but it is really just math at the end of the day, math that would be great to have in the system, rather than just being encouraged to do things that don't really make any logical sense.

2 Responses

My name is Erin, and I'm on the Help Team here at Moz! Thanks for reaching out! I'll do my best to capture all your questions in a format that will be easy for you and other members of the community to digest. :)

1. "I understand that Moz has categorized SEO issues as high, medium, low, etc... Is there public data available that backs up these assertions?"

We set the high, medium, and low issues on our Crawl Diagnostics based on SEO best practices, and what we've seen in the past. If you search "SEO best practices" you might not find and exact match to how we frame these ratings, but it should be pretty close. :)

2. "One question that I have is regarding the effect of keyword changes. If you have a page that has the right keyword and places somewhere in search for that keyword, but gets an F for placement of the keyword and other particulars. What is the average difference expected from resolving those issues? It is great to have information about ranking factors that you can try and move the needle on, and a basic checklist of housecleaning items to keep a clean site, but I worry that there is little actual organic value to any of those things. That external links are so strong of a ranking factor that none of the things that moz helps you do can move the needle. "

We can't give you an "average difference expected from resolving" issues. Our tool simply provides suggestions of things you can improve, but there's no guarantee that these changes will improve your rankings. It's important to follow SEO best practices, but even when you make improvements there could still be sites ranking higher than you.

3. I also worry that since Moz doesn't appear to have any way to track impressions that you have to spend too much time externally tracking where the opportunities are. Or at least it would be way better to have that information internal to the tool.

Our tool is very DIY. Using our metrics it's up to you to decide where to spend your time. :)

4. "I understand that with higher traffic sites you have more reason and data to use to find opportunities, but with smaller more local sites it is slim pickin's from the long tail. So finding ways to optimize effectively seems prohibitively difficult. Or at least that is the way it appears going into it without quality data on how the various sections are actually effective the ranking of Moz clients. I would hazard to guess that there is a ton of optimization effort going into the wrong places because the tool doesn't give great advice on how you should actually vet the results."

I totally empathize with you on this one. While our tools won't actually implement any SEO on your behalf, our tools will help you do a killer job implementing your own SEO strategy. I realize our tools lack a lot of specifics on how to actually vet results. This goes back to the DIY thing. :)

5. "If you look at the local and global results on an individual keyword. You can see that Moz is pulling that information. But it doesn't have it on the keyword list for tracked keywords. Why not? That would be way more useful. So you can quickly export and do a bit of math to determine what kind of actual results you are chasing."

Great idea! This has actually been suggested before, and it's planned! You should subscribe to our feature request forums for updates:

6. "That was a bit rambling, but mostly I'm wondering if there is any data on what is high value in Moz and what is just wheel spinning. We can all make up our own opinion, but it is really just math at the end of the day, math that would be great to have in the system, rather than just being encouraged to do things that don't really make any logical sense."

We don't have any data on this, as what is considered "high value" is going to be different depending on your situation. As you said, everyone can make up their own opinions, so it's all a matter or judgement calls to decide what makes the most sense for your sites.

Holy moly, I hope I covered everything! I highly recommend you peruse our Feature Request Forum. We take feedback pretty seriously around these parts, and prioritize feature requests based on popularity. :)

Thank you for the detailed response. Very interesting position that your tool is DIY. Is that the intent or is that just the reality?

I really want my seo tools to be the opposite of the divide and conquer mentality of search, where data is hidden or just not collected in order to keep people paying for SEM in order to collect data.

So I understand the "you are here" of your service. I'm just wondering where this is going to grow to. I would really like to see something more tuned to specific seo strategies. And have the data collection be correlated with action.

This needs views. Such as, all second page items with high traffic potential and low seo scores. So that there is a really clear idea of what is going on in the tool.

As far as the data collection. Your company is where the good aggregate data should come from. As it is probably not going to come from google.

So with all the campaigns and the crawls. You should be able to build a statistical model of the actual affects of seo best practices. Because you can see where people improved their pages and if that correlates with actual traffic increases. Where else is that data going to be found?

I imagine that as part of the core function of the seo industry. Not just to provide tools that promote best practices. But to collect data on what those are and stop the bleeding of people chasing bad seo.

As a customer, that is what I want to see.

I would also like to see single page analysis. Mostly for landing pages that place on a bunch of keywords. You need to see the potential traffic numbers so that you can pick out of the list of keywords where you want to optimize.

I understand the feature request suggestion. I'll look for that. I just wanted to comment on the same post :).

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